Time Pressure Disease

In The Future of Nostalgia Svetlana Boym describes time pressure as the disease of the 21^st Century. The feeling of having no time and continuously multi-tasking creates a stress in society. From the vibrating buzz of an iPhone to the alert beep of an email to 24hour Internet access we are now non-stop technology consumers.  To the extent that we no longer differentiate between off-line and on-line but instead permanently hover between the two.[1] As a consequence of continuous technological interaction, Boym articulates contemporary nostalgia not of one looking to the past but the feeling of being squeezed out of the present.[2]

[1] Alan Kirby, Digimodernism (New York: Continuum, 2009), p.123

[2] Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p.351